Elvis - That's the Way It Is (1970) on Netflix
PG19701h 37mDocumentaryMusic
Elvis Presley rehearses with his band and backup singers in Culver City, California, in July 1970. His Summer Festival then opens at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb8.0/103,523 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
Cameras follow Elvis Presley through the summer of 1970 as he prepares to sing live again after years of making films. He works through songs on a studio lot in Culver City, California, with his band and backup singers, and later in Las Vegas with The Sweet Inspirations, Millie Kirkham and The Imperials, running through numbers such as I Just Can't Help Believing and Bridge Over Troubled Water. An Elvis Presley Appreciation Society convention in Luxembourg, led by Radio Luxembourg DJs, raffles off his tandem bicycle to a fan. The Summer Festival opens on August 10, and the shows are filmed before audiences that include fans and celebrities.
Cast
- Jerry Scheffas Self - Musician
- Ronnie Tuttas Self - Musician
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Elvis - That's the Way It Is (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's opening credits use footage from Elvis Presley's September 9, 1970 show at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, the first date of his first tour in 13 years.
- Technical advisor Colonel Tom Parker first planned the project as a closed-circuit television broadcast of a single show; it ended up being shot with eight Panavision cameras in 35mm anamorphic format.
- The 2001 re-edit made its worldwide debut on Turner Classic Movies, where it became the most watched film ever on the network, seen by 95% of the audience, and for that reason the DVD version did not sell well.
- Producer Rick Schmidlin's 2001 recompilation cut 12 minutes of documentary and non-Elvis content to add more performance footage, and dropped the original's concert performance of "I Just Can't Help Believin'".
- While making the 2022 biopic Elvis, director Baz Luhrmann unearthed previously unreleased Presley footage, including extensive outtakes from Elvis: That's the Way It Is, and this material became the basis of the 2025 documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.
